Unverified Voracity Goes For Superlatives

Programming Note: I'll be on WTKA with John U Bacon this afternoon from 4-5. WTKA streams live for those in the diaspora.

It wasn't a total head implosion weekend. Lost in the dual frustrations from hockey and basketball was the baseball team's strong start: 4-0 against an array of Big East teams (and, oddly, Purdue), including two walk-off wins to open the season. Formerlyanonymous is now blogging up a storm about the baseball team at Varsity Blue; his article on the weekend is probably the most detailed recap of a Michigan baseball weekend ever written(!).

Michigan is in Jacksonville Wednesday through Sunday taking on a wide array of meh-sounding teams: North Florida, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Jacksonville, and Akron. Their major opportunity to get some committee-impressing nonconference wins comes in mid-March when Michigan goes to Arizona for a three-game series.

Hello again, Elliot. Elliot Mealer's unfortunate life story has made him perhaps the most-chronicled anonymous redshirt freshman offensive linemen ever(!). His local paper has a story on him, and this one deviates from the usual fluff and goes for a couple of interesting quotes:

"The speed of the game is just incredibly different from high school," reflected Mealer. "I talked to guys who I had played with at Wauseon and told them about the first time I faced speed in practice. I was playing left tackle against Tim Jamison (2008 starting defensive end). He comes at me and in high school you are taught to get your hands on him and move, but he slapped my hands down before I ever got them up. The next thing I realize I'm on the ground asking what happened and he's sacking the quarterback."

There's also a story about John Thompson crushing Mealer backwards, causing him to wonder if he'd been concussed; it's a step up from the usual stuff you get in these things.

One downer: it sounds like Mealer's on-field future may have been damaged by the car crash.

For Mealer, the challenge is restoring lost shoulder strength which may never return.

"The team has been doing a lot of upper arm strengthening in the weight room, but I'm not allowed to start that until after spring break (Feb. 20-28)," said Mealer. "At that time, I will start out with two to three days of upper body strength training and I'm not sure how long that will last, but it could last my whole career just to stay on top of it."

Mealer was a top-250 sort who certainly projected to playing time; with lingering effects from the injury he won't be in the conversation to start this year, at the very least.

…Rodriguez is in danger of falling behind in the spread offense arms race in terms of sophistication. I discussed that phenomena with Purdue as a pass-first spread team over the last decade, but it's of a slightly different order with Michigan. In the spread's nascent days, the spread-to-run innovators included Rodriguez and Kevin Wilson and Randy Walker at Northwestern, with Urban Meyer following shortly after. Wilson is now at OU and of course Meyer is at Florida. Compare their offenses with Rodriguez's: there's not much difference from a run-game standpoint (though Meyer and OU mix up their sets a bit more and use more tight-ends now), but the passing games have seen a wide departure. Wilson now uses what Chuck Long put in at OU, with some schematic residue lingering from Mike Leach and Mark Mangino, while Meyer, along with Dan Mullen and Mike Sanford, assembled a pro-style one-back approach gleaned from John L. Smith and Scott Linehan from Louisville and Joe Tiller and Jim Chaney from Purdue. I can't say I'm a huge fan of Meyer's passing game, but it's definitely more sophisticated than what Rodriguez has going on.

But Rodriguez is a bright guy and his passing game originally derived from (though is a long way now) the old run and shoot. So you'd think he could remedy this. Yet with nothing but true freshman, that evolution will have to wait. The longer they wait, however, the farther behind they fall.

This is more of a restated concern than a new one, and it's worth pointing out that the situation Rodriguez inherited last year was not conducive demonstrating any sort of great leap forward in passing sophistication. The larger issue is that Rodriguez, scrambling to do a thousand different things to reshape the Michigan football program, is probably not spending a lot of time keeping ahead of the game. It's all conjecture until walk-ons have been banished from the depth chart, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

I'm hoping this is more of a Pat White effect than a Rich Rodriguez one; West Virginia's passing offense of late didn't look sophisticated because 1) it didn't have to be and 2) it didn't play into White's strengths. Even if White did well at the combine keep in mind that Rodriguez was deploying the guy as a freshman/sophomore/junior, so the bulk of his recent forays into passing games were with a wobbly underclass jet engine; risk would be stupid in a situation like that. Tate Forcier, the most accurate passer EVER, figures to change that equation significantly.

More attrition? Buried in this recruiting chat from Josh Helmholdt is an interesting bit of speculation:

The WR position was a disappointment this past year, so I certainly understand the need to recruit as many WR's as possible. Also, the depth at the slot WR position is shallow and could get even thinner before the freshmen come in next year.

That points squarely the departure of a slot receiver currently on the team. Martavious Odoms was Michigan's leading receiver a year ago and has two teammates joining him, so it's unlikely to be him. Terrance Robinson is a redshirt freshman who didn't play because of injury. Rodriguez recruited him to play in the slot, too. He's probably going to stick around and try to earn playing time. There's only one other guy on the roster who played in the slot last year: Toney Clemons. There have been erratic transfer rumors about Clemons for months now, but never anything concrete. This is also not concrete, obviously, but Helmholdt doesn't just say things without sourcing.

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"sophisticated spread" offense better than a less sophisticated spread offensive, other than being sophisticated sounds better?

It seems like OU and UF are just adopting and tweaking their offenses to fit their personnel (who happen to be really good). UF has Tebow and OU Bradford. Both of these QBs are great, but have different styles. Hopefully (and I believe this) Pat White, Threet, and Tate/ Denard led RR offenses would be somewhat different, with the most balanced, most winning one being the "sophisticated" offensive.

i compare it to the "why dont they run more back doors?" argument that people use against belien when michigan looses.

its easy to cover routes when you can get constant pressure by only rushing 3 or 4.

its easy to take away backdoors when the team cant hit threes...

we start giving the QB time to throw, with a qb that can throw, with a running attack that demands respect, with receivers that will run the correct patter, and get off of a jam, all of a sudden those passing routes will look a little more "complex"

i wasn't commenting the intelligence or merit of it, i just felt he was confused by the use of sophistication.

and come on, i know scheme isn't the be-all end-all, but i think there's at least a little something to the idea of having a well-designed passing game vs. having random route running being at least a small advantage. not the OMG WE MUST DO THIS thing that will push Michigan to MNC after MNC or anything.

now, i don't own RR's playbooks, so the idea his passing game isn't "sophisticated" could well be full of shit to begin with.

that martavious odoms has the smallest hands I have ever seen on a guy catching the ball. As soon as I saw that, all of the fumbles and drop balls made more sense. It's hard to protect the ball if you can't get it covered and it's hard to catch the ball with tiny hands. That's why the NFL always measures the recievers hands at the combine.

the routes seemed to work less in conjunction with each other than other more "sophisticated" designs. It was really a statement that was made before he got to UM, IIRC, but I think it still rings true that you have to consistently make the simple plays before you start getting all fancy. Besides, fancy plays take time to run and we couldn't block for shit and that really hampers the qb's ability to make the plays.

I think too, that our receivers were inexperienced. It doesn't help when all of those guys are just learning how to run routes and Threet got locked into a guy like odoms and he wouldn't even go through the progression and he'd just wait with his arm cocked for Odoms to break into the seams and hole in the zone and he'd fire away.

In those instances, it doesn't matter if you've got some complex route designs like the Eagles or some of those other teams.

becasue we all know that the scheme is whats most important, not oh, i dont know, maybe how good the players are, or better yet how comfortable the players are with the system, or even better, how good the system is for the players...

if the football game was as much about who has the newest play calling chart we could just have coaches send in their playbooks figure out which one was the most unique and award the victory that way.

I guarentee you RR is more concerned with running his schemes right, getting his players to perform and sprinkling in a couple new twists, then he is with making sure he is considered "an inovator"

I think the most common thing i said to myself during the season was "crap he has no time" or "man was that kid wide open how did we miss that?" not very much did i say "wow we would be so much better if our freshmen recievers and our crappy qb with a terrible line in front of him ran more complex read reciever routes that require upper class thinking and execution"

but if you really came away after watching all of those games saying "the reason we are loosing is becasue we dont have a sophisticated enough passing attack" then i would say to you "no pilot can fly a wingless plane."

We need to be able to execute the simpliest of passing plays consistently before we worry about doing anything fancy. IMO, we had enough trouble blocking the simpler routes and giving Threet enough time to fire the ball off his back foot and over the reciever's heads to even worry about the complexity of the passing game. The biggest test of this team is going to be the OL in both pass protection and the run blocking. If we have not moved light years ahead of where we were at the end of last year, we'll struggle to be a .500 team. In it's purist form, football comes down to beating the man in front of you and when 11 guys do that you're successful...irregardless of scheme or fomration or any of the other reasons people spout off about.

With that being said, I would think that we need to continue to spread the field both horizontally and vertically because at times last year, we kept going to the bubble screens and the curl routes out in the flat and teams didn't fear the long ball, so the safeties could squeeze down a little more knowing we were trying to go over the top. It's bad enough when you can't block 5 on 5, but when they can get the LBs and safeties in there as well, with no fear of being burned in one-on-ones that leaves in the passing game. I was re-watching some games from last year over the weekend and there were a ton of times we got corners or safeties blitzing off the edge that left our guys one on one and we couldn't get the ball to them. I am hoping the OL will be better and the QB will be able to make those plays, even if he is a true freshman.

A true freshman needs to worry about the speed of the game and making the basic reads pre-snap. He doesn't need to be reading the option routes of his receivers as well. I know this won't sit well with the kool-aid drinkers, but I think at best, we go 7-5 next year as there are still way too many questions about the line, the QBs, the safeties, the LBs, the DL, the CBs, and the kicker.

he confuses ability with opportunity. we wont know what rod is capable of in the passing game until he has players capable of executing. likewise, theres no reason to think he's falling behind just because he can't put in everything he has in his arsenal right now. he's obviously dumbed down the offense out of necessity

and, as gsimmons points out, the point is to win, not to be fancy. not that we did much of either last year.

but i do think he has a certain point that rod's passing game generally (if you look at playbooks or cut-ups) isn't quite as advanced as what some out there have put together and maybe hasn't moved forward a whole lot over the years. is that a problem? maybe, maybe not. are there bigger fish to fry wrt the offense right now. definitely

but really, writing about michigan's passing sophistication in a year where nick sheridan saw significant time is what i think brian would call "not enough data so i make big"

I'm sure that if there were some tape available of RR's offense that allowed slow-footed Shaun King to break passing records at Tulane, RR's passing routes would look a lot better, too.

And even with "only three passing plays," as it was posted, there were still plenty of open recievers that Threet-idan flat out missed. I will judge RR's offense on the successes he has had elsewhere with better personnel. RR has won with a glorified run and shoot and with a run based spread option.

RR may be resting on his laurels as the "godfather of the spread option," but I sincerely doubt it. AFAIC, we really won't know where he stands on the innovative curve until we see what he does with good personnel. Even though RR was universally lambasted as being "inflexible" last year, he has shown that he is able to fit his program to the personnel at hand.

The one positive about last season is that nobody even expects UM to win more than seven games this year. UM will be an underdog often, and this could be a much better situation for them. There won't be nearly as much pressure on Tate Forcier as there would be if he were given the keys to a team that won twelve games last year. He really isn't being asked to do much more than go over .500 by most of the fanbase and media at this time.

If Forcier can simply hit the wide-open recievers that Threet-idan missed, he can fulfill the expectations of most. I think, though, that he will do better. And he might enable RR to show off a few more "tricks" than he did last year.

I like Smart Football, but I call fail on that analysis.
First off Rod is 1 of the best coaches in football, if he felt that his offense was ineffective due to route integration you would think he would try to remedy this. He would probably talk to his closest friends in the profession or the most successful coaches to learn from them. Boy who would that be???? Oh the guys that learned the offense from him and they meet with each off season in Florida and Oklahoma and they are 1 and the same. The passing game doesn't need to be sophiticated when you run over everyone. You line up when they bring down the 8th and 9th guy you pass...just ask Tom Osborne. If you have guys that are limited passers but good runners you focus on that. If/When Tate has some experience and our offense is not clicking at a rate equal to our talent and it is because no one open then someone can ask this question until then this is silly. I don't have the coaches tape, but I don't see Florida doing anything that amazing... have Tebow fake a run and watch everyone bite then throw to wide open receiver. Other coaches with unsophisticated route work in the passing game.

passing offense? Meaning he likely doesn't care how "intelligently designed" the routes are, he just wants them to work. His stated goal was always to make the defense defend the whole field, which seems like a subtly different goal than having cleverly designed schemes for the passing game. Perhaps I'm making distinctions where there are none, not sure.

On a related point (and going a but further out on the limb) isn't it clear by now that looking at who he's recruited at QB (White, Pryor, Newsome, Beaver, Robinson, Forcier) that if RR values the running QB hat can pass a touch more than the reverse? I mean, none of the guys above (other than arguably Forcier, who was not RR's first choice as we know) were valued super highly for their passing ability, in most instances they were guys who had promise (with work and development) as passers, but were fully formed running threats. And of this is so, then doesn't it follow that he has evolved his thinking to the spread being more of a running attack that can pass, rather than a fully balanced attack with sophisticated passing schemes?

i read smart football pretty regularly; the guy who writes it is a big advocate of having a coherent, analytical approach to the game, and particularly to offense. nothing new there - this is basic bill walsh stuff.

i'm probably not going to explain this well, but when he talks about sophistication, i take him to mean passing game that is planned out and structured to attack the defense in a systematic manner. designing routes in combination with each other (within a play and within a series of plays) so as to stress the defense and force it to give you certain things.

rod obviously does this, but it's also a fair criticism that his passing game can be a bit of a mish mash of different plays and routes when compared to someone like chow or leach (both of whom smartfootball adores) who are very clearly setting up (and taking apart) pass defenses in a more rigorous manner

that kinda reads like jive, but it's the best i can do

anyway, does all that matter? maybe. is it fair based on what was available as far as personnel? probably not. but smartfootball is an x and o site, so thats what it talks about, fair or not i guess

But I'm not sure I could tell by looking at at game real time/speed who had the sophisticated passing routes and who didn't. But when you think of the guys that supposedly run the real smart passing offenses, starting from Coryell at San Diego in the 80's, then Martz at St.Louis, to Kevin Wilson at OU, Tiller at Purdue, Leach at Texas Tech and others, all of those offenses were pass first. It just seems to me that since the Sean King era, RR seems to recruiting QB's whose first best skill is running, not passing. So the question is, (if smart football types that break down passing schemes are correct), has RR's philosophy evolved to one where he believes the spread is most effective as a running offense with the legitimate threat of passing, rather than the other spread gurus who apparently believe its greatest potential lies as a passing offense?

Newsome was. And Newsome, while having good arm strength and potential according to the services, was a more of a run first type, like Pryor and all the other guys we recruited. So my question holds, does RR think the spread is more effective as a running offense?

Let me be clear in that I'm not being declarative here. But the evidence (or arguably the way I'm looking at it) seems to show that RR may not value the pass quite as highly as he may have once. Otherwise wouldn't we be recruiting the Bradford/Orton spread types as well as the dual threats? Or maybe I'm missing something.

often, in baseball, southern low-rent-seeming teams are stronger than northern big-name teams. i have no idea whether jacksonville or northern florida are any good----but i bet michigan will get more credit if they win those games than for wins over mac teams, small michigan schools, etc.,

it is just really hard to get top baseball, tennis, etc., players to stay north and spent so many months working out indoors

North Florida isn't half bad. They've just recently transfered to D1 in the A-Sun. They were on par with middle of the pack Big10 teams. Their talent should have them slightly better, it just didn't come together last year. The rest of our upcoming schedule is pretty week though. #115-170ish in last year's RPI. I'm just getting ramped up for HATE day on March 8th. Fuck the Mets.

and the hardest to defend against a spread option read team is the slant bubble. ask anyone that has ever gamplaned against a spread option team, once that slot bubbles out, your holding your breath...

but if no one is worried about your qb's ability to throw and hit open recievers, your offensive lines ability to protect, or your wr's ability to get off of a jam or ability to block downfield, then no passing attack is going to work

nebraska, the 80s and 90s.
oklahoma, the 70s and 80s.
usc, the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
ohio state, the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
michigan, the 70s and 80s.

i know, old examples...but those were often-spectacular offenses that worked, not because of "sophistication" but because they had great talent and execution. there's value in outsmarting the other guy, but eventually even the most "sophisticated" offense gets figured out and it comes down to how good you are at doing it and how good your players are.